


A Dainty Dish To Set Before The King

by philomel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dark, Demons, F/M, Gen, Hell, Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-10
Updated: 2011-09-10
Packaged: 2017-10-25 17:21:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/272842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/philomel/pseuds/philomel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The tender part, the untainted bite: she could find it, tease it out on the tip of her knife and offer it on her hands like a dish.</p><p><span class="small">Spoilers up through "Caged Heat."</span></p>
            </blockquote>





	A Dainty Dish To Set Before The King

Crowley never knew Bela Talbot in her original flesh. But she knew him.

The first time she saw him was when Lilith summoned her to her residence at the time: an all-girls orphanage. Lilith had tried on and tossed aside every little girl like a teenager rifling through her closet and declaring nothing to wear. Last one left: a 17-year-old about to turn 18. Lilith wore the girl with a resignation that still couldn’t hide her smug satisfaction.

Sitting on a metal folding chair like it was a throne, Lilith welcomed Bela with her arms spread wide, matching the spread of her legs. Bela did not go into Lilith’s arms, recognizing it for the mock gesture it was. But between Lilith’s legs kneeled a man in a pinstriped suit. Bela noted the receding hairline, his head retreating to the dark space between Lilith’s legs, lapping at her while Lilith petted his thinning hair like he was one of her hounds.

Bela didn’t see him again until the howling stopped — the beasts’ and hers.

His face was different then, Lilith’s too. But Bela could smell them — the lack of fear in their blood, the blood on their hands that was not their own. They set themselves apart from the souls, from the other demons too.

Lilith walked the bone-inlaid floors of Hell like it was her court with her pet at her side.

Thirty years later, Bela found out his name.

On his rounds, he watched from the corner as Alastair guided Bela’s hand over a young man’s hand. Her incisions were precise, scoring along his Lifeline, his Line of Head, his Line of Heart. She had already removed his heart, placed it between his lips like an apple in the mouth of a succulent pig. With a serrated blade, Bela cut short the man’s Line of Fate. His destiny was to end up there, on her table — the table she’d come down from, taking Alastair’s gentle hand. There, the young man would spend every day, tongue removed, grooves carved into his body. Every day, like a record skipping on the last track.

From the corner, the other demon, Lilith’s lapdog, appraised her progress with looks and no words.

It contrasted with the constant chatter of Alastair, instructing, tsking, teasing, touching her like a lover and parent at the same time. He was the one to turn to the demon in the corner and say, “What a fine job our little Bela’s doing. Isn’t she, Crowley?”

Crowley curled his lip, baring a glint of teeth, shining in the blood-darkness. Whether it was approval or a warning, Bela didn’t know. She didn’t care when Alastair took her by the cheek and taught her how to turn the young man’s insides out.

Bela didn’t see Crowley again for a long time. Lilith had become a queen in exile, banishing herself to the flesh of a good little girl scout, then a candy striper, then a dental hygienist.

Then, ten years after Alastair brought Bela to his side, an angel brought light to Hell.

There were murmurings of Lucifer being born again.

Bela felt the brush of wings against her face, and felt the word _hope_ form in her mouth, though it had no taste. She touched her fingertips to her tongue, coating it with the filth of her butchery. And, for the first time in ten years, she wanted to spit it back out.

The light receded almost as quickly as it arrived.

Bela chased after it. Beyond the blur of wings, she saw the naked limbs, the bloodied hands of a torturer clinging to feathers. She saw the blinking eyes of Dean Winchester, almost black in the shadows the angel’s light cast.

When they left, there was cold, the scent of ozone, then chaos.

Then Alastair came to her. He wrapped Bela in his arms and, into her ear, he sang: _And the cares that hang around me thro' the week, seem to vanish like a gambler's lucky streak._

They danced. While the trees toppled around Dean Winchester’s grave and Lilith released the Witnesses from their bonds and Crowley fled with his tail between his legs, they danced.

Then Alastair left her. Like the last little ember before a fire goes out.

There was never any fire in Hell.

Bela lost herself to the decades.

With delight, she anticipated each new cut of meat. She could get you the best. The Delicatessen they called the room where her rack stood, showing off specialties that made demons’ mouths water. The tender part, the untainted bite: she could find it, tease it out on the tip of her knife and offer it on her hands like a dish. To sample her choicest selections, they lined up for miles — almost as long as the line that had no choice but to climb up and be the dinner at Bela’s table.

When Alastair died, she switched knives in his honor, cradling the one on which he’d taught her, torn her, taught her again.

When Lilith fell, Bela sang, _ding dong, the bitch is dead_ , and went on her merry way, slicing a spleen into paper-thin pieces that would melt in a demon’s mouth.

When Lucifer rose, she did not care, except for the way the whole of Hell shook and how she nicked her thumb while her favorite blade julienned brain matter. It marred the work of her near-perfect lobotomy. She had to start over.

The same happened when Lucifer returned, bringing another angel, a boy named Adam who was not the first, and Sam Winchester with him.

Bifurcating the colon was tricky work, and the Devil’s re-entrance rattled all her cutlery, getting on her nerves. She cursed the angels, the fallen ones, forgetting the one who rose, the one who made her feel something she could not name.

That was when the cur named Crowley came back and introduced himself to Bela with an outstretched hand. “I’m your new king.”

“Am I supposed to kiss it?” she said.

His hand withdrew into his pocket. “You’ll get blood on it,” he said.

Clothed in his meat suit. Crowley stood out among the naked demons of Hell. He wore a pinstriped suit, tailored and cut to fit. Bela had made suits like that — just as good, made out of the meat of souls, writhing and raw. She’d sewn up souls within souls, bursting with their own juices, a feast for her fellow demons.

But Crowley was not her equal. He was her king, this one who had once been the lapdog of Lucifer’s first. But unlike Lilith, Crowley did not rule in absentia.

Bela, he declared, would be one of the first to go. Her job was dirty and he washed his hands of her.

“Up,” he said. “I want you up there.” He pointed, as if cardinal directions had much meaning there, as if Earth sat right above them, sandwiched perfectly between Heaven and Hell. Straightening the starched cuffs beneath his suit sleeves, he told her, “I’ve a building where you could set up shop. Have your own market with daily deliveries.”

“And who on Earth would want what I have to sell?” Bela asked.

Crowley tilted his head back. “Oh, I suppose the ghouls would appreciate it.”

 _Ghouls_ , Bela thought, and fought the urge to spit. “And what if I say no?”

Crowley walked up to her, pressed against her, cheek to cheek. She remembered Alastair, counted _one two three four, two two three four_ in her head.

In her ear, Crowley said, “Let’s say you don’t.”

Getting out of Hell required no climbing, no clawing, no burrowing upward like the mistakenly buried who would dig and dig to break free even if it used up their last breath. Instead, Bela simply followed Crowley as he walked his stately though stump-legged walk over the un-waxed bone floor. No longer blood-polished, it looked like common tile now. No red to brighten up the place.

The luster of Hell was gone — Crowley was wearing it all himself. Some part of Bela appreciated the quality of his finery, yearned to make it her own. If he would make her queen....

The new King made a new Hell.

But where he took Bela, walking out one door and in through another, looked like old Hell.

Bela’s Delicatessen there was a blood-splattered room, with the best blades, the finest table already inclined for the first body her butchery could handle. Yet, her meats did not come back for seconds. And the ghouls gobbled up her finest cuts like starving animals, savoring none of her delicate work.

This, this was a flimsy facsimile of Hell. A formative Hell, not perfected.

When the angel came, and the Hellhounds growled, and Dean showed up in the den of ghouls, Bela felt like time had stumbled backwards.

She waited in the corner, eyes black and suited to darkness.

She waited until the screams died down, waited until the scent of angel faded like smoke, waited until the Winchesters and the racket of their car grew as faint as the smell of pumping blood and fossil fuels.

Crowley was gone.

 _The King is dead,_ Bela thought, and pocketed the best knife. _For now._

She knew better. Even as she saw the back of his head, retreating, she knew. Dogs always return.

Hurrying, she hotwired a Cadillac and burned rubber down the road. She remembered this.

Soon she would bedeck herself in a meat suit fit for a queen.

Yes, she was running, she thought. But not like Crowley did when Lucifer walked the Earth. Bela was no frightened pet. Nor would she pad behind a king who was no better than her, a stealer of crowns, another high-end thief.

Bela kneeled before no one.

She was a great thief once, and now she knew exactly how to steal hearts and make a meal of them.

**Author's Note:**

> • For [](http://womenlovefest.livejournal.com/profile)[**womenlovefest**](http://womenlovefest.livejournal.com/) : [ We Love The Women That Fandom Hates](http://womenlovefest.livejournal.com/1987.html)
> 
> • Title taken from the nursery rhyme “Sing A Song Of Sixpence.”
> 
> • The lyrics Alastair sings to Bela are from Irving Berlin’s “Cheek To Cheek” — the same song he sings to Dean in “On The Head Of A Pin.”
> 
> • [Some information on palmistry](http://www.palmistry.com.au/palmistry-lines.html) — although the lines mentioned in the fic bear no real significance in the story other than giving Bela guidelines by which to cut.  
> 


End file.
